82
" In twenty-first-century Britain, we've linked singing with talent, and we've got that fundamentally wrong. The right to sing is an absolute, regardless of how it sounds to the outside world. We sing because we must. We sing because it fills our lungs with nourishing air, and lets our hearts soar with the notes we let out. We sing because it allows us to speak of love and loss, delight and desire, all encoded in lyrics that let us pretend that those feelings are not quite ours. In song, we have permission to rehearse all our heartbreaks, all our lusts. In song, we can console our children while they are still too young our rusty voices, and we can find shortcuts to ecstasy while performing the mundane duty of a daily shower or scrubbing down the kitchen after yet another meal. "
― Katherine May , Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
85
" The choice of St. Lucy’s Day is significant here. These days, many Northern European countries mark her feast on 13 December, but in Donne’s time, it was celebrated on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, amid the oppressive darkness. It marked the beginning of Christmastide, and then, as now, the experience of grief must surely have been heightened in times of high spirits, when those in mourning can feel at their most isolated. "
― Katherine May , Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
94
" Sometimes writing is a race against your own mind, as your hand labours to keep up with the tide of your thoughts, and I feel that most acutely at night, when there are no competing demands on my attention. That slightly sleepy, dazed state erodes the barriers of my waking brain. My dreams are still present, like an extra dimension to my perception. But crucially, my sensible daytime self, bossy and overbearing, still slumbers. Without its overseeing eye, I can see different futures and make imaginative leaps. I can confess all my sins to a piece of paper with no one to censor it. "
― Katherine May , Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
95
" Yet here I am, edging even closer to the abyss, throwing away the secure underpinnings of my life by leaving my secure job. In daylight, I can make an account of the stress that made the decision to leave a sensible one—the slow encroachment that ate into my family life. But that’s in the daytime, when I value such things as calm and freedom. In the dark, I am struck by a dyspeptic bout of conservatism. I should have a savings account containing a year’s salary. I should have proper life insurance. I have squandered something, somehow. I am not sure what or when, but I despise myself for it. The precariousness of my life bites me hard. I can feel its teeth in my gut. I am nothing, I am no one, I have failed. "
― Katherine May , Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times